A note on this (meta) review: I saw Michael Hanekes English-language remake of his disturbing masterpiece Funny Games in theaters in the early spring of 2008. Before writing my review, I immediately went out and watched the original 1997 German-language version. Given that the films are virtually (and very purposefully) identical in every way and have same themes and intent, this review will read as a kind of remake of my review of the English-language version, maintaining large chunks of analysis that apply to both versions of the film.

Michael Hanekes Funny Games is a viciously effective polemic against the placid acceptance of film violence, a perverse experiment in audience manipulation that lures us into watching what should be unwatchable and then draws our attention to our unexamined desires. Given that movies are more violent than everwhether they be high-octane action movies or grotesque horror filmsFunny Games seems even more appropriate now than when it was made as a response to hyper-violent arthouse fare like Reservoir Dogs (1992) (although Haneke had originally come up with the basic idea for the plot in the late 1960s, the idea of using the thriller genre self-consciously against itself didnt come until much later).

The story is deceptively simple. It open with a comfortably wealthy family comprised of father Georg (Ulrich Mhe), mother Ana (Susanne Lothar), and adorable preteen son Schorschi (Stefan Clapczynski) driving out to their summer lakeside home in their Range Rover, towing a sailboat and playing guessing games with the opera on the CD player. Haneke immediately establishes that something will go terribly wrong when he breaks the reverie of Handle, Mascagni, and Mozart with the jolting screams of Naked Citys industrial heavy metal song Bonehead, an audacious and unsettling interruption that sonically foreshadows the intrusion of violence into the familys otherwise serene existence and constitutes the first of many assaults on the audiences sensibilities.

Violence comes to the door dressed in gleaming white polos, white gloves, and deck shoes. Two young men, Paul (Arno Frisch) and Peter (Frank Giering), whom Georg and Ana had seen standing in the yard with their neighbors a few minutes earlier, appear at their door asking to borrow some eggs. There is something not quite rightoddly disaffectedabout them, but they are well-dressed, well-scrubbed, and have the proper level of politeness and gentility. What follows is perhaps the films best sequence, as Ana goes through a verbal dance with Peter in which polite geniality is tested, then tested again, then tested yet again until it starts to crack and become terse frustration. The escalation is slow and methodical, and its impossible to tell at exactly what point we realize that there is danger in the air, although all pretenses are dropped with an exchange of insults, a slap, and then a golf club smashing Georgs knee. At that point, its clear that the family is in for hell.

What transpires over the next hour and a half is a sadistic game of cat and mouse in which the smiling, polite youth keep the family hostage in their own home, torturing them psychologically with a series of games in which their lives hang in the balance. The seclusion of the familys summer homewell off the road and safely ensconced behind an electronic gatebecomes their prison, ensuring that no one can hear them scream and no one is coming to their aid (a phone accidentally knocked into the sink cuts off all outside contact). In other words, with little effort the intruders are able to turn the familys securitythe exclusive province of the wealthyinto a tool of their punishment. It should also be noted that all of the instruments of violence are not brought into the house by the intruders, but are already there: a golf driver, kitchen knives, and later a shotgun taken from the neighbors house.

When the film premiered to a howling chorus of both cheering applause and raucous boos at the Cannes Film Festival, Haneke made it abundantly clear what his intentions were. In his directors statement, he noted that film violence has been domesticated to the point of no longer rightly offending the audience, thus the question becomes not how do I show violence, but how do I show the viewer his own position in relation to violence and its portrayal? To this end, Haneke steps outside the bounds of the conventional thriller and adopts several Brechtian techniques that directly confront the viewer with his or her culpability in watching the film. Several times Paul breaks the fourth wall, addressing the audience directly either with his knowing gaze or by speaking to us, taunting us with what he knows are our generic desires. Do we want to see more? Do we want to see a proper ending? What would a proper ending in such a film look like? We get a glimpse when Haneke allows the film to diverge into more traditionally gratifying territory, only to cruelly rewind it and set it back on its original, nihilistic trajectory. It is this teasing attitude, this viciousness disguised as playfulness, that set off so many viewers.

Hanekes experiment is a success if you walk out of the film not only talking about it, but questioning your own role as an accessory to the films crime. Art film enthusiasts will likely do this if only because they know theyre supposed to, which feeds into criticisms that the film is just a sop to the egos of sophisticated filmgoers who can revel in their own intelligence and bemoan the density of the general movie-going masses who wont get it. Of course, Haneke purposefully tried to make the film as accessible as possible to the mass audience (which is also why he made an English-language shot-for-shot remake in 2007), which is crucial to its point, especially for the gory horror movie crowd for whom human suffering is a typical night out on the town. Yet, the true brilliance in the film is this: Regardless of the viewers response, Haneke wins. If they get it, then his film has successfully drawn the viewers attention to the otherwise unexamined. If the viewer doesnt get it, then the film has proved the point that we are, in fact, inured to onscreen bloodshed. Either way, Hanekes film is vividly conceived and dazzling in its manipulation of audience expectations, simultaneously gratifying and thwarting them in the way that only a truly masterful filmmaker is capable.

Funny Games Criterion Collection Blu-ray

Aspect Ratio

1.85:1

Audio

German DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 stereo

Subtitles

English

Supplements

Video interview with director Michael Haneke

Video interview with actor Arno Frisch

Video interview with film historian Alexander Horwath

Press conference from the 1997 Cannes Film Festival

Trailer

Essay by critic Bilge Ebiri

Distributor

The Criterion Collection

SRP

$39.95

Release Date

May 15, 2019

COMMENTS

The image on Criterions new Blu-ray of Funny Games was scanned 2K from the original 35mm camera negative and restored by Listo in Vienna, with color corrected supervised by director Michael Haneke. It looks extremely good, with a clear delineation of detail, natural colors, and good contrast and shadow detail, which comes into play in the latter half of the film when the sun goes down. The opening shot is quite grainy, almost as if it was zoomed in on in postproduction, but the rest of the film is very smooth, albeit not without losing a filmlike texture. The disc also features the original 5.1-channel surround mix in DTS-HD Master Audio that was remastered from the 35mm magnetic tracks. Almost all of the sound in the film is diegetic, so the only music we hear is coming from players in the world of the story except for the sudden intrusion of shrieking heavy metal during the opening credits. The soundtrack is clean and clear, and the multi-channel mix does a good job of intensifying the films various threats in the otherwise mundane environment.

In terms of supplements, Criterion has included over an hour of new video interviews, including one with Michael Haneke (25 min.) and one with actor Arno Frisch (18 min.), who, as Haneke notes in his interview, is the only one of the four principal actors still alive (Mhe died of cancer in in 2007 at age 54, Giering died of acute bilious colic on 2010 at age 37, and Lothar committed suicide in 2012 at age 51something that Haneke discloses in the interview). Hanekes interview is, of course, incredibly fascinating, as he continues to be one of the most articulate and thoughtful filmmakers working today, and he expounds at length about the films long-gestating life and his intentions for it. There is also a hefty 28-minute interview with film historian, curator, and director of the Austrian Film Museum Alexander Horwath discussing the film and its place in Hanekes oeuvre. From the archives we get 44 minutes of footage from the press conference at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival that features Haneke, Lothar, Mhe, Frisch, and producer Veit Heiduschka (a longtime collaborator of Hanekes going back to 1989s The Seventh Continent).